


The Fury Awakens

by MooseLane



Series: Star Wars: Fury Road [2]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Droids, F/F, Gen, Mad Max canon-typical warnings, Space grannies, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-28 05:02:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6315814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseLane/pseuds/MooseLane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More Mad Max/Star Wars TFA crossover!</p><p>This is a sequel to my fic <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5830039">Call It Luck</a>, now bringing the whole Fury Road cast of characters into play. In space!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is currently unfinished on my end, though I know where it's going. Expect steady but irregular updates. Enjoy!

Max tries to work through how he got into this mess. Why in hell he was flying close enough to the Citadel to be caught up in a dogfight. What he was doing in the Ausva cluster in the first place, after avoiding it for many years.

Blood rushes to his head, making it hard to think.

 _Maybe it's time you laid them to rest_ , he recalls, an echo of a voice. _Maybe that's what they want, for you to go home_.

That was on Jakku, when he was checking up on her. On... shit, he knows her name, why can't he think of it.

Blood runs across his face, staining his vision red. He's having trouble thinking much of anything right now.

 

—

 

Furiosa circles the War Rig, ostensibly checking the engines before the run. It's a parade, really, a show of strength for the Immortan. She raises her robotic arm and the crowd cheers, the clamor following her as she enters the ship. 

Her crew, the Ace and two War Boys, do final checks before takeoff. She stands in the center, watching them, keeping her feet firmly planted over the subfloor storage chamber. 

"'Bout to bring in the live cargo, then we're good to go, Boss," the Ace calls.

Furiosa taps her foot twice, then makes her way to the pilot seat. She grips the gearshift and waits.

 

—

 

_Rey!_

Max comes awake with a jolt. That's her name. The girl on Jakku. The one he met in a sandstorm, on the run from slavers. He brought her a new nav system, and she was really happy. Her family had not come back for her.  _Yet_ , she had said. Maybe that's why she was so adamant that there was something for Max out here. Something besides hanging upside down with a head injury, somewhere deep in the bowls of Joe the Hutt's feudal city.

Max is starting to think he has some seriously rotten luck. 

A taser shocks his spine, sending his muscles into wild spasms. His feet are released and he crashes to the floor, with barely the presence of mind to shield his head. There is shouting. There are hands everywhere, and then he is in motion.

 

—

 

The women cling together tightly in the hold, their arms and legs intertwined, their frantic heartbeats pressing against each other's skin. Dirt falls through the slats above as the crew races about the cabin. 

They hear a pair of boots stop overheard, see the faint outline of the Imperator, their savior. She does not look down at them, but taps her boot twice. _Hold tight_.

They hold their breaths until they feel the engines start. Cheedo whimpers as the Rig lifts off the ground, and Dag pulls her tight to her chest. The momentum of the ship pulls them to one side, then the other.

"Why aren't we going up?" Capable whispers, barely audible over the engine's rumble.

 _Flyby,_ Toast mouths, pressing a finger to her lips. 

Angharad closes her eyes and tightens her arms around her swollen belly. She can hear the cheers of the crowd, praising Joe as if he were a god. She can hear the screams hidden further down, deep within the winding burrows of the Citadel.

Tears sting her face as she feels the ship pull up beyond the stratosphere.

 

—

 

Furiosa eases the gearshift to a cruising speed, her eyes locked on the nav system. 4,000k. 4,500k. She breathes steadily. 6,000k. Far enough outside Ausva's gravity well. She slides her hand along the control column and nudges a switch.

The ship lurches forward with a metallic grind.

"What was that?" one of the War Boys calls from his turret. 

Furiosa leans over the status panel. "Something's wrong with the thruster on the rear tanker." She turns in her seat. "Morsov, Slit, go check it out." The War Boys spring to their feet and take off running. 

The comms crackle with voices from their escort war machines. "Imperator, everything all right? Your back engine's gone dark."

"We're on it," Furiosa reports back. "Hang close."

The intercom buzzes from the rear of the Rig. " _Boss, we can fix it but we can't find any repair kits back here. Morsov must have left 'em._ "

" _I did not!_ " the intercom buzzes again with a crackle of static.

" _Mediocre, Morsov!_ " Slit jeers.

Furiosa presses the call button to interrupt their catfight. "Ace is coming with a repair kit. Sit tight and don't kill each other before then." She nods at Ace and turns back to the flight panel.

Ace hesitates. "Boss, what's going on?"

She ignores him.

" _Furiosa,_ " Ace urges. 

Furiosa turns and locks eyes with her second-in-command, ice in her stare. "Are you going?"

He hesitates for a moment. "Yes, Boss."

Furiosa wipes sweat from the dark skin of her forehead and stares hard at the view screen, counting the seconds. Her escort, three scrapped-together war machines, fly in tight formation with the Rig. She eases her shields up, praying they don't notice and do the same. Furiosa rests her hand on a lever hidden beneath the dashboard.

Morsov buzzes in over the intercom. " _Hey Boss, Ace is looking at it now, but someth_ —"

Furiosa jams the lever, and the rear tanker detaches from the Rig. She ignores the alarms blaring through the cabin and punches through a series of commands.

Voices call from the subfloor chamber. "Furiosa, what's going on?!"

"Stay in there!" Furiosa roars over the cacophony.

The escort starts to fan out. The comms buzz. "Imperator, the tanker—"

The Rig blasts an EMP, and the closest war machine goes dark. Furiosa punches the hyperdrive, and leaves the Ausva cluster behind in a blur of stars.

 

—

 

 _Tie fighters strafe the outpost, and she's running, quarterstaff useless against the onslaught, a boy grabs her hand and they're running_ — 

Max jolts awake to hear the blare of alarms. He tries to move but he's locked somewhere with barely enough room to sit up. He jangles the bars, trying to dislodge the lock. 

[Hey, stop that] a series of beeps echo madly through his steel chamber, resolving slowly into words. Max recoils violently when a rusted white droid pokes up in front of the bars. It seem to consider him curiously.

The droid whistles low, moving through system checks of its weapons systems in order. [I’m supposed to stay here and guard you, Bloodbag, but if this alarm keeps going I'll have to check things out upstairs.]

Max furrows his brow. "Blood... bag?" His words come out slow and cumbersome.

The droid turns to him brightly. [You've got good blood! You'll bring a real shine price for the Immortan at the meat market. He was so pleased.] It beams at Max. [You're very lucky, my parts are mediocre, not worth anything. Now stop thrashing, or I'll pike you in the spine before we get there] it finishes, releasing and then retracting a heavy skewer.

Max tries to sort through what the droid is saying but nothing quite makes. He slumps back and stares hard at the lock. If it opens he can be free. He needs it to open. Desperately, he  _wills_ it to open. His head pounds.

The lock does not budge.

Max flinches as rapid images flash before his eyes:  _the girl—Rey—running through the sand, running for a ship, almost to safety! He feels her elation, and then terror as it_ explodes—

Max is thrown back against the cell wall as the cargo ship leaps into hyperspace. The droid shrieks as it tumbles across the floor. The ship shudders, the cell door jangles in its frame—

And the latch comes open.

 

—

 

Toast shoves the grate off the top of the storage chamber and gasps a breath of fresh air. 

Furiosa whips around. "It's not safe yet."

"We can't breathe in there," Angharad protests, lifting herself out and holding a hand to the other women. "Besides, you made the jump."

"I only knocked out one ship, the rest will be after us soon," Furiosa says as she checks her radar. "We're going to have to make a few more jumps before we set a course."

The women ease into the small cabin, stretching their cramped limbs and passing around a canteen of water. 

"We did it," Cheedo whispers, as if afraid to say the words aloud. Dag smiles sweetly at her.

"Not yet," Toast mutters, glancing warily at the viewscreen.

Furiosa adjusts the coordinates on the nav system, watching the radar as she makes her calculations.

She puts her hand on the hyperdrive. "Strap in, we're going to make another jump."

The doors to the cargo hold hiss open, followed by the whine of a blaster charging up to fire.

Furiosa whips around to see a man charge into the cabin, his face half masked with blood and grime. He casts his gaze around wildly, then locks the blaster on her.

 

—

 

Max feels dangerously exposed. He reaches for his scarf to hide the scarred-over slave brand, but finds it missing. It must have been taken along with his ship and his jacket. 

The pilot tracks his every move, eyes shining bright under her dark forehead. He keeps the barrel trained on her.

Sharp breaths escape from the cluster of women in white, all eyes on him. He shifts his grip on the blaster.

Their voices rise in whispers around him. _We're going to the Green Place of the Many Mothers. What's wrong with his eye? The pupil's blown wide. Is he coming with us? No, he's a crazy smeg who eats schlanger!_

Joining them come the voices he came here to bury. A kind voice twisted into harrowing screams, a child's cries plunged into silence. 

The light in the room pulses, growing too bright or fading toward darkness. 

A voice emerges from the chaos, one of the women on the ship. She approaches him, the light illuminating her scarred face.

"You will put down the gun, and proceed peacefully," she says, her voice stern, yet lofty.

Max blinks, and stares at her in confusion.

The woman closes her eyes and begins again. "You will put down the gun..."

Max feels the words worm into his brain, wriggle through his nervous system and try to arrest his grip on the blaster. He grits his teeth and squeezes the trigger.

She gasps as the blast grazes her leg. A stream of blood trickles down her calf.

"Angharad!" the other women scream, alternately beckoning her and sneering at Max. The red one comes between them, shielding her. Angharad stands her ground.

The pilot charges his blind spot and sends him sprawling. The blaster skids across the floor, and they grapple for it, throwing elbows into jaws and boots into guts. Max gets the gun, and she gets her metal hand around his throat.

Everyone is shouting and trying to get between them and someone is pointing at the viewscreen—

"Furiosa! They're here! Joe's war party!"

She—Furiosa—glances at it, and growls in frustration. She turns back to Max and loosens her grip ever so slightly.

"You want out of here?" 

He scowls at her, the answer etched in every tensed muscle in his body.

She scowls right back. "This is your only hope."

The War Rig takes its first hit, and the world shudders around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few items: 
> 
> \- Capable is a Twi'lek, because it seemed to make a lot of sense for both her character and the history of that species (their women were prized for beauty and often sold as slaves). And it seemed kind of speciesist of Joe the Hutt to only have human women slaves.  
> \- Furiosa is a non-human humanoid; the blackened forehead is a permanent feature.  
> \- Yup, Nux is a droid. More on that later.  
> \- Thank god for [starwars.wikia.com](starwars.wikia.com)


	2. Chapter 2

Furiosa dives into the pilot seat, checking their shields—down to 80%—and recalibrates the hyperdrive. 

She yells over her shoulder, "I need someone in the turret!" She locks eyes with Angharad, but the woman shakes her head desperately. "I don't care who, but I need someone _now!_ "

The man with the gun glances at Furiosa, and she nods to him. He doesn’t look like he will be on his feet much longer, but he’s pulsing with adrenaline from their skirmish; hopefully enough to get them out of there.

"Everyone, strap in!" Furiosa calls out, then flips on comms to the turret. "What's your name?"

Silence on the line. The background noise of gun checks. She huffs. "They want the women, so they'll try to keep us here. The moment we move they'll start firing again. Are you ready, Fool?"

A moment's hesitation. " _Go_."

Furious shoves the gearshift foreword and grabs the yoke, hauling the Rig between war machines. The Fool fires, aims for the engines and turrets, doesn't waste time on shielded cockpits. Disable, disarm, and run. They take another hit, shields down to 65%. The Fool returns fire fiercely, but his accuracy is waning. The Rig shudders with a third hit. Warning lights flash across the dash, but the hyperdrive is ready. She fangs it.

They make the jump, and she punches in the next set of coordinates without hesitation. They jump again. 

" _Gonna burn the drive_ ," the Fool mutters into her headset.

"Don't have a choice right now." She dials the next set of coordinates, and they jump.

The warning lights on the dash flare with urgency, and the hyperdrive goes offline. A planet looms large on the viewscreen, tinged with green and smothered with clouds.

"What is that?" Toast asks, leaning around Capable to see.

"It's green," Dag notes.

"Is it the Green Place?" Cheedo gasps.

"This is a waypoint, M-19," Furiosa says. "Need to make some repairs, and make sure they lost our trail." 

"Dagobah," the Fool says, stumbling out of the turret. "Not landing here."

Furiosa raises an eyebrow. He doesn't continue. She sets an orbit sequence, then turns to him. He leans heavily on the wall, eyes flickering warily about the space. "Sit," she says, nodding to the copilot chair. He snaps his attention back to her, then the empty seat. Guardedly, he slides in across from her. She begins running through control panels, extinguishing the warning lights one by one.

In the cabin, Capable helps wind a bandage around Angharad's leg, which earns her a kiss to her temple in thanks. Capable smiles, then starts to put away the medipack, but Angharad puts out a hand to stop her.

"He needs medical attention, too," she says. 

"He _shot_ you," Toast scoffs, grinding a toothpick between her teeth.

"He attacked Furiosa! He's a smeg!" Dag spits. Cheedo nods in agreement. 

Capable hesitates, looking between them. "He fought with us against Joe," she concedes. 

"In his own best interest," Dag retorts.

Angharad straightens in her seat. "We agreed at the start, no unnecessary killing. That includes not denying someone care when they need it."

Toast meets eyes with her, then huffs. "Maybe it's in _our_ own best interest to have another ally who can fight."

Angharad opens her mouth to argue the point, but decides against it. She stands and walks toward the cockpit. Capable follows with the medipack.

The man—the Fool, as Furiosa called him—recoils at the sight of her. He tries to back away, but his legs give out as he attempts to get up. He growls at her wretchedly. 

Furiosa watches from the corner of her eye as she pulls the control panel off the hyperdrive.

"I won't hurt you," Angharad says, maintaining eye contact with him as Capable digs into the medipack. 

The Fool snarls, "You tried... t' _force_..." He takes a shaky breath. He can't seem to pull all the words together, but Angharad understands.

"I was trying to stop you from hurting others," she says, her tone neither accusation nor apology. "I swear, I will not hurt you."

She turns to watch Capable adjust the settings on a mediscan. "Human, right?" Capable asks. The Fool doesn't answer. She takes that as no contest, and initiates the scan. He winces away from the light. "Hold still, this is just to tell us what's wrong."

The machine beeps in her hand, and she reads off the results. "' _Closed head wound, active bleeding_ '... We can see that all right. ' _Traumatic brain injury, intracranial hypertension, unilateral mydriasis_ '..." She pauses and scrolls through the readout. "He needs meds to, um, _increase_ _oxygen perfusion_ and _reduce cerebral edema_ , but I don't think we have any of that in our kit." She looks gravely at Angharad. 

"There's an ALS medipack in the cabin, under one of the seats," Furiosa says from behind them. "That should have something." Capable nods and races back to the cabin. 

Furiosa goes back to the mess of wires she pulled from the hyperdrive. She splays them out, careful not to get anything tangled, and leans over the hyperdrive panel to view the fuse box. She pulls out the first one—a glass cylinder with a metal coil inside—inspects it for damage, and replaces it. She pops her knuckles against her hip, then pulls out the next fuse. Inspect. Replace.

"Furiosa," Angharad calls in a low voice. "Can you help me a moment?"

Furiosa wipes her hand on her pants and approaches. Angharad gestures to a wad of gauze she has pressed to the Fool's scalp. "Just hold this in place while I seal the wound closed."

The Fool watches her as if she was a bomb about to go off. Furiosa glances briefly at a heap of bloody gauze at his feet. Angharad murmurs assurances that he does not seem to hear, or does not care to acknowledge. Panic starts to spread across his face, his muscles tensing, fingers flexing—

"Hey," Furiosa says in a low, calm voice, shifting fully into his line of sight. "Be still. You'll survive this." He untenses by increments, watching her all the while. 

Capable stumbles back in, with a handful of medication packets. "If he can still swallow, give him these. And these." She looks up to see he is still conscious, mostly. She cups his hand in hers, and dumps a pile of pills into it. She presses an open canteen into his other hand. "These will help reduce the swelling in your brain. Can you take them?" She asks. He stares for a long moment at the pills, then exhales deeply. He swallows them with water and leans back, brow furrowed and eyes trained on the ceiling as if expecting the worst, but not ready to face it. His breathing evens out. His eyes slip closed, and he slumps in his seat, unconscious.

"I gave him pain meds and a sedative, too," Capable says with a fleck of contrition. "He was so distressed, I don’t think he’d allow himself to heal."

The two women clean up and return to the others, while Furiosa goes back to checking fuses, keeping an eye on him as she works.

 

—

 

"There's blood on your gown," Dag says as Angharad returns to the cabin. Angharad looks down at the spot, and sighs. 

"You can get it out if you soak it right away," Cheedo suggests.

"Just ditch it," Toast advises. "Hell, that's what I'm gonna do." She starts digging around in the storage compartments below their seats, shoving aside airtight suits and mismatched boots until she finds a stash of worn dungarees and work shirts. She tosses several pairs out onto the floor. The women watch Toast hold up pair after pair of pants to her waist, the length of each extending far past her bare feet. Dag picks up a discarded pair and begins to do the same.

Capable, as tall as she is, quickly finds something suitable and pulls them on, cinching the waist tight. She holds out a pair for Angharad, who eyes them skeptically.

“I don’t think any of these will fit around my belly,” she mutters, glowering. Capable nods thoughtfully and retrieves her discarded white sarong, affixing it around Angharad’s hips.

“It’s something,” she says conciliatorily.

“Something,” Angharad agrees, and picks a pairs of socks Toast has littered across the cabin.

 

—

 

_Max!_

_Max, you came back!_

_Rey beams at him as he staggers down the ramp from the Intercepter. She runs from the shelter of the ruined ATAT, moving at first as if she might embrace him but stopping short as he falters back. She smiles at him all the same._

_Come inside! How have you been? Look what I learned to make, you have to try it!_

_He hefts a pack, containing a refurbished nav system, onto his shoulder and follows her inside, a hint of a smile on his face._

_When he steps through the doorway, the world is engulfed by flames. Jessie holds their child tight to her chest as she runs, gangsters on speeders close behind. Max tries to reach them, but he is too late, far too late, their blood and bodies feeding the sands. He drags himself along the burned out shell of their home, and Rey stands before him—brave and naive, just a child—she faces off against a dark shadow, fights with all that she has, but with just the touch of the shadow's hand, she crumples—_

Max thrashes awake, fists up and ready to strike. He glances around in confusion at his surroundings, a cockpit of some kind—

"It's okay," a voice, quiet and tired, assures him. "Sleep, get some rest."

Max sits up to see a woman replacing a circuit in a hyperdrive. As he watches her, details start to trickle back, in reverse—her grip on his throat, a blaster firing from his hand, bloodbag, captivity, getting shot down on Ausva—

He watches her with consternation, but her movements are calm, almost languid. He eases back into his seat and runs a tentative finger along his scalp, where his head had connected with the dashboard of the Intercepter. There is a bandage, neatly applied, over the tender spot. There's a dull ache in his skull, and it feels large but distant, far away from here.

"Angharad did a good job with you," the woman says without breaking her concentration. An image comes with the name, a pregnant woman with a scarred face. He shot her, and then she helped him. Max rubs his hand over his eyes. 

"She all right?" He asks, his voice rough and dry. The woman glances at him for a moment, then nods. He settles and watches Dagobah spiral by on the viewscreen, listening to the quiet sound of her work.

The red woman approaches the cockpit with a mug in hand. "Furiosa, we found—oh, you're awake!" she exclaims when she sees him. She raises the mug. "Are you hungry?” He considers her for a moment, then nods. 

She returns with a mug and he takes it gratefully. He has no idea when he last ate. She nods to him, "How are you feeling?"

He glances at her, then away. "Mm. Doesn't hurt so much." He takes a sip of the soup, then a long gulp. "I, um. Thank you," he murmurs, then finishes off the mug. Capable gives something like a smile in return. 

Furiosa glances at the status screens on the dashboard. "I'll need to check the hull and peripheral engines for damage once the hyperdrive is fixed. I need the repair kit from the cargo hold. Can you get it, Capable?" The woman nods, collects their cups, and leaves.

"You have a suit?" Max asks, gesturing toward the upper end of the viewscreen, the black void of space. 

"Easier to do it planetside. We'll land and do the repairs there." Furiosa finishes the circuit, then starts putting the hyperdrive back together. Max looks at her askance.

She straightens. "What?"

"Not a good place," he says. "Bad, mm, reputation."

"We don't _come_ from a good place," she scowls. "This planet has a breathable atmosphere and scans showing little to no sentient life. I'll take it." She slides the hyperdrive panel back in place, and flips it on. The drive boots up at full power. She lets out a quiet sigh in relief, then turns to the next task.

"You a blackthumb?" she asks. It's been a long time since he heard that term; it's scarcely used outside their corner of the galaxy. He nods. "If you can move, I'll need your help outside."

 

—

 

Capable moves slowly through the door to the cargo hold. It looks like a bomb has gone off. The chamber is in complete disarray, with crates upended and their contents—produce, implements of war, mother’s milk—scattered across the floor. She is abruptly grateful that Toast found solid shoes for her as she wades through the debris. She edges around the open door of a holding cell, its lock torn apart and walls smeared with blood. This must be where the Fool had been kept. She lingers for a moment, then presses on.

Capable spies the repair kit in the back under a collapsed shelf. She kicks aside a clear space on the floor and kneels, pushing up on the bent metal trapping the kit. The sticky residue of milk glues her pants to the floor, releasing with a squelch when she adjusts her position. The shelf does not budge, despite her efforts. She sits back and considers her options.

A lever, of some kind, might do the trick. She looks around for a pry bar, and recoils at the sight of a droid, tucked back against a shelf, watching her.

Capable swallows her fear and turns to face the droid. “What are you doing here?”

The droid replies in a low drone. [I couldn’t do anything. The War Rig, our best ship, betrayed the Immortan and I couldn’t do anything.] It slumps with a grinding creak. [What good am I as a warmech droid then?] It tries forcefully to retract an arm that Capable now sees is crushed under a cargo crate.

“Stop that,” She holds out a hand to calm the droid. “You’ll injure yourself more.”

The droid shrugs with a shuddering grind. [I’m so rusted the Immortan can’t even use me for scrap. I won’t get to live on in other war machines.] It finishes with a distraught moan.

Capable studies the droid for a moment, then glances back at the trapped repair kit. “Maybe you were being spared for something greater,” she says and gestures to the collapsed cargo crate. “If I can help you get out, will you help me?”

The droid looks up at her then, and agrees.

“What’s your name?” she asks as she begins to push aside debris to reach the far end of the crate.

[N_x] the droid replies, helping lift on its end.

“I’m Capable,” she says, getting a grip on the crate. “It’s nice to meet you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few more things:
> 
> ALS = Advanced Life Support
> 
> In real life, Max would be puking his guts out with a head injury of that caliber. Um... the War Rig has an anti-nausea field. Yeah, that's it.
> 
> N_x is a "warmech" droid, a patched-together hybrid of an astromech droid (like R2-D2 and BB-8) and an armed battledroid. So like a War Boy and a Blackthumb.


End file.
